Read The Marbury Lens for Free Online

we started kindergarten, and I could always read that competitive look on Conner Kirk. It said he just wasn’t going to give up until he won the game. He reached down beside his seat and pulled up a knife.
    He flicked it open.
    I felt suddenly sick again, and Conner said, “Knife versus tires equals unfair fight.”
    “Don’t, Conner.”
    “Dude. You have to. It’s what you need.” And he added, “Knife versus ragtop Benz equals lambs to the slaughter.”
    Conner laughed.
    I began to sweat.
    “Con. Stop it.”
    He turned the headlights off and pulled around behind Freddie’s car.
    “Fuck that, Jack. I’ve got a stake in this, too. Nobody fucks with us. Ever.”
    He opened his door and left the truck idling.
    “Now come on, Jack. It’s time for a little payback.”
    My head rushed when I stood beside Conner, looking at that car. And he didn’t waste any time, either, as he raised the knife and plunged it straight through the canvas top of the Mercedes. I kind of jumped, like I could feel the stab, and I heard the ripping sound as Conner shredded open gashes above the passenger side.
    “That’s my stuff in there,” I said.
    Conner stopped what he was doing.
    I could see my clothes through the Mercedes’ window: shorts, socks, the T-shirt I had on at his party, balled up and rumpled on top of the new Vans I’d only worn one time. Conner climbed onto the hood, snaked his arm down through the tattered top and unlocked a door. No alarm. The car must have been thirty years old, at least.
    I began to pant when we opened the door. I could tell Conner was scared, too, and I’m sure it was because there was some part of him that didn’t entirely believe everything I’d told him—maybe he was afraid to think those things really happened to regular kids like us—but, seeing my clothes there on the passenger seat brought that whole twisted world into focus.
    “Take it back,” Conner said.
    It almost made me sick to touch my own clothes and shoes. I opened my wallet. Everything was there, but out of order.
    Just like Jack.
    When I picked up my clothes, I uncovered a familiar plastic box.
    “Look at this, Con,” I whispered.
    Inside were a handful of the same zip ties Freddie had used on me. Conner picked two of them up, rolling the thick, glossy black straps with sharp edges between his fingers. The box also contained Freddie’s stun gun, and a blister pack of pills. And there were some capped hypodermic needles and a bottle of clear liquid with its label blacked out by slashes of permanent marker pen.
    “Fuck.” Conner sounded like we’d unearthed a tomb. He picked up the stun gun, flicked its switch twice, then tucked it into the pocket on his shorts. “This guy’s sick. Roofies.” He held the pills so they just caught the faint light from over the courts.
    “That’s what he put in the water he gave me that first night,” I said.
    “And this is probably the shit he shot you up with.” Conner turned the bottle in his fingers.
    “Let’s get out of here.”
    “I want to see him.”
    My heart felt like it would pound its way through my rib cage.
    “Con,” I began.
    “Just point him out through the window,” he said. “I need to see him.”
    “I’m scared.”
    “I know. That’s why I want you to do it. ’Cause you don’t need to be scared anymore, Jack. Let me have a look at that sonofabitch.”
    I didn’t say anything. I walked back to Conner’s truck and got in, holding my clothes on my lap, not looking at them, just staring straight down the alley toward the light of the street. I shut the door and Conner leaned his head in the window.
    He sighed. “Okay, Jack. Let’s get out of here, then.”
    Then he must have seen the change in my eyes as I stared straight ahead to the street corner.
    Freddie Horvath was walking toward us, carrying a cup of coffee, dressed like he was heading to work for another night.
    “He’s coming.”
    Conner dropped down between the cars, hiding from the